saxitoxin wrote:Obama Formally Turns Over the Government to Committee of CEOs

Two dozen business leaders, including the chief executives of major U.S. corporations such as Ford, IBM and Wal-Mart, will meet President Barack Obama to discuss how to control the federal deficit, said the White House on Monday.

Business executives invited to meet the president on Wednesday were Mark Bertolini of Aetna Inc, Ursula Burns of Xerox Corp, Kenneth Chenault of American Express Co, David Cote of Honeywell International Inc, Michael Duke of Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric Co, Andrew Liveris of Dow Chemical Co, Robert McDonald of Procter & Gamble Co, Alan Mulally of Ford Motor Co, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo Inc, Ginni Rometty of IBM, and John Watson of Chevron Corp.

Obama Unveils 2nd Term Environmental Program: "We'll Beat the Crap out of Environmentalists"

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar threatened to punch a reporter on a recent trip to Colorado, according to witnesses.

Dave Philipps, a reporter for the Colorado Springs Gazette, tried to ask Salazar about his appointments to the Bureau of Land Management and the wild horse population in the state. Specifically, Philipps had questions about the government's relationship with a wild horse buyer who allegedly sold more than 1,700 horses to Mexican slaughterhouses.

Ginger Kathrens, executive director of the Cloud Foundation, witnessed the exchange between Salazar and a reporter. Her organization put out a release cataloging the exchange and blasting Salazar for his treatment of the press.

thegreekdog wrote:I know you claim you aren't partisan, but this is as partisan as it gets. You're literally searching for excuses and you've backed off of your "Obama provided details" claim.

I have no problem if you voted for Obama if you have a good reason for doing so. You had a few good reasons and that should be enough, but the rest of these things are simply not true statements; it's like I'm reading an Obama campaign email (of which I received hundreds).

I never stated anything about whether I'm partisan or non-partisan. What does the term mean to you? I'm somewhat conservative, but not when it means, "capitalism without ethics," and not when it means, "my religion trumps women's freedom." The turns my (Republican) party has taken sometimes disgust me. Some of what the Demo party does sometimes disgust me too.

Meanwhile, I'm not searching for excuses at all, I'm refuting your ridiculous twists of what I said as you come up with them.

I never said Obama published his numbers, I said he had them; and later I specified they were always available in his budget. I also maintained all through this that my problem with Romney is, Romney kept claiming a specific number of (12 million) jobs his "plan" would create, yet Romney never had the numbers to back that up. I believe Mitt's LIES, trying to claim a non-existent analysis confirms a specific number of jobs that would end unemployment in the U.S., are worse than your concern with not personally reviewing Obama's budgets. Obama's plan, however, is very simply stated: raise taxes on the types of businesses that are sending jobs overseas; ask those who can afford it to pay a little more taxes from their personal wealth because our country is hurting and so are so many of its people right now; and give tax incentives (deductions) to companies that are creating jobs within the United States because those jobs are needed to help us out of this bind.

I actually had hoped not to vote for Obama, mainly because I disliked his use of executive order to stop border patrols from prosecuting and returning, illegal aliens. My thinking is, if we need immigration law reforms, then reform them, but don't stop the folks from doing the jobs we pay them to do: enforce the laws as they exist.

Alas, this year, just like last pres campaign, my party picked a-holes.Prior election: McCain, mainly just too old and grumpy - albeit, a grumpy old man with a fairly nice history; but obviously going a tad senile for thinking we'd go for his vicious pitbull "appeal to teenie boppers and muscle-t men" Sarah vp pick - as well as needing to retire if he thought that his demeanor in the debates was appropriate (his reference to Obama as "That one!" really made me grind my teeth and while not many spoke of it, I do believe his nastiness back then was far worse than what we saw in this year's debates.)

This election's Romney, just too much the chameleon who'll say what he thinks he needs to say to win, whether he means it or not, whether it makes sense or not, and whether we see through it or not. He ran his campaign like his Bain Capital runs its ventures: make promises of all sorts to folks, when the real "promise" was always to himself and his investors. Called on facts that didn't add up frequently he frequently just ignored the questions. Essentially, a shyster; and one that was far too willing to go to the extreme right because that's where his investors wanted him, as shown by his extremist vp pick, Ryan, who thinks his religious principles should trump a woman's choice of which religious faith, if any, will guide her reproductive decisions. Maybe she shouldn't have sex, but not all women who get "unintentionally" pregnant have indiscriminate sex.

Bottom line, I voted for Obama, twice, because I believed he was the most candid and viable representative of the choices I was given - doesn't mean I wouldn't have preferred a better choice.

See my response in the other thread for more details. I didn't vote for Romney, mostly because he was too conservative for me socially and I was not convinced he was conservative enough fiscally. So I have no skin in this game. Based on what you've said so far, you should have either voted for Obama (based on your seemingly blind worship of him as a good Reagan Republican) or Gary Johnson (if you are a small government person). I believe you are a statist with respect to economics and a libertarian with respect to social issues. This puts you squarely in the Democratic Party and your parroting of rhetoric makes sense.

thegreekdog wrote: Based on what you've said so far, you should have either voted for Obama (based on your seemingly blind worship of him as a good Reagan Republican) or Gary Johnson (if you are a small government person). I believe you are a statist with respect to economics and a libertarian with respect to social issues. This puts you squarely in the Democratic Party and your parroting of rhetoric makes sense.

1) I'm not blind2) I'm not parroting rhetoric, I did my own data searches. 3) Since I almost never listen to anything but Republican talk show hosts, I never heard any Democratic rhetoric to parrot unless it was during the debates.4) I've found a few, "How Dem are you," and "How Repub are you" quizzes on various sites. When I take them, I'm squarely in the middle, but if I change my pro-choice stance to anti-choice, I'm squarely Republican.

thegreekdog wrote: Based on what you've said so far, you should have either voted for Obama (based on your seemingly blind worship of him as a good Reagan Republican) or Gary Johnson (if you are a small government person). I believe you are a statist with respect to economics and a libertarian with respect to social issues. This puts you squarely in the Democratic Party and your parroting of rhetoric makes sense.

1) I'm not blind2) I'm not parroting rhetoric, I did my own data searches. 3) Since I almost never listen to anything but Republican talk show hosts, I never heard any Democratic rhetoric to parrot unless it was during the debates.4) I've found a few, "How Dem are you," and "How Repub are you" quizzes on various sites. When I take them, I'm squarely in the middle, but if I change my pro-choice stance to anti-choice, I'm squarely Republican.

I think you're confused. I've rarely found such an ardent Obama and Democrat supporter on this thread.

And you shouldn't listen to Republican talk show hosts. They regularly lie and spin.

Phatscotty wrote:much more realistic to transform the Republican party. Whatever they may say, it's virtually impossible to deny the battles in the Republican primaries, where the swingin dicks of yesterday can no longer even qualify to run for re-election. We made Arlen Specter switch to the Democrat Party. We have called up Ted Cruz. We have sent Marco Rubio, Jason Chaffitz, Allen West, and Rand Paul.

Republican Leadership to Scott: "Your Vote for Romney Was Appreciated ... Now Here's a Gift"

The 2010 class of GOP congressmen were yanked from their committee assignments this week during a Night of Long Knives and relegated to back-bencher status by GOP leadership. Justin Amash of Utah - who endorsed Ron Paul - was pulled from his powerful post on the Budget Committee and reassigned to a junior position on the committee responsible for oversight of the Northern Marianas Islands.

Huelskamp remained defiant on Wednesday afternoon, telling reporters that Boehner signaled he would be booting more Republicans from prestigious panels.

“Where I come from in Kansas, if you want to stab a guy, you look him in the eye and say, ‘Hey.’ Don’t go behind closed doors and send out your aides to say, ‘This is what happened.’”

Phatscotty wrote:much more realistic to transform the Republican party. Whatever they may say, it's virtually impossible to deny the battles in the Republican primaries, where the swingin dicks of yesterday can no longer even qualify to run for re-election. We made Arlen Specter switch to the Democrat Party. We have called up Ted Cruz. We have sent Marco Rubio, Jason Chaffitz, Allen West, and Rand Paul.

Republican Leadership to Scott: "Your Vote for Romney Was Appreciated ... Now Here's a Gift"

The 2010 class of GOP congressmen were yanked from their committee assignments this week during a Night of Long Knives and relegated to back-bencher status by GOP leadership. Justin Amash of Utah - who endorsed Ron Paul - was pulled from his powerful post on the Budget Committee and reassigned to a junior position on the committee responsible for oversight of the Northern Marianas Islands.

Huelskamp remained defiant on Wednesday afternoon, telling reporters that Boehner signaled he would be booting more Republicans from prestigious panels.

“Where I come from in Kansas, if you want to stab a guy, you look him in the eye and say, ‘Hey.’ Don’t go behind closed doors and send out your aides to say, ‘This is what happened.’”

Phatscotty wrote:much more realistic to transform the Republican party. Whatever they may say, it's virtually impossible to deny the battles in the Republican primaries, where the swingin dicks of yesterday can no longer even qualify to run for re-election. We made Arlen Specter switch to the Democrat Party. We have called up Ted Cruz. We have sent Marco Rubio, Jason Chaffitz, Allen West, and Rand Paul.

Republican Leadership to Scott: "Your Vote for Romney Was Appreciated ... Now Here's a Gift"

The 2010 class of GOP congressmen were yanked from their committee assignments this week during a Night of Long Knives and relegated to back-bencher status by GOP leadership. Justin Amash of Utah - who endorsed Ron Paul - was pulled from his powerful post on the Budget Committee and reassigned to a junior position on the committee responsible for oversight of the Northern Marianas Islands.

Huelskamp remained defiant on Wednesday afternoon, telling reporters that Boehner signaled he would be booting more Republicans from prestigious panels.

“Where I come from in Kansas, if you want to stab a guy, you look him in the eye and say, ‘Hey.’ Don’t go behind closed doors and send out your aides to say, ‘This is what happened.’”

If you are reporting that John Boehner is more anti-Tea Party than Liberals are, and just as sleazy, that isn't news to me

Boehner is a pragmatist; he does what he knows he can get away with - after the incident at the GOP convention he saw that the Tea Party still turned-out to vote for Romney anyway. Therefore, he knew he could castrate their remaining members of Congress without any repercussions. And, as predicted in this thread a few months ago, he did.

Had Romney lost after a groundswell of opposition from the Tea Party instead of losing with the meek and dutiful support of the Tea Party, the Knight of the Long Knives wouldn't have happened. Now it's just a mop-up operation for Bohener - round-up the remnants, close this chapter and move on with business as usual. The Tea Party takes its place on the shelf next to Ross Perot, Ralph Nader and John B. Anderson as just another, once-a-decade, insurgent flare-up that the Major Parties crush.

No way! I disagree! There is a quasi-dimension here that is not being accounted for!

Sure, the fiscal wing mostly turned out, the Social wing somewhat sat it out, and the Liberty wing was AWOL. But most important were the Independents. roughly 10 million less people voted this time than in 2008, and (correct me if I am wrong) but Mitt Romney got more votes than John Mccain did, or else it was very close. That said, f*ck John Boehner AND Woodrow Wilson.

The news you reported does trouble me, but I don't know why you would expect me or us to give up or admit defeat. We will find another way, and the Campaign for Liberty will continue to grow.

on Romney, was the wrong candidate (again), but at least he is not a Marxist.

Ron Paul would have crushed Obama

Rand PaulThe House leaders chose to punish some of their more conservative members for voting for a budget that balanced in the short term and against one that took 28 years to balance. For standing up for fiscal sanity, they were removed from the budget committee. I object to this action, and it sends the wrong message both to conservative members and to the American taxpayer.

Phatscotty wrote:No way! I disagree! There is a quasi-dimension here that is not being accounted for!

Sure, the fiscal wing mostly turned out, the Social wing somewhat sat it out, and the Liberty wing was AWOL. But most important were the Independents. roughly 10 million less people voted this time than in 2008, and (correct me if I am wrong) but Mitt Romney got more votes than John Mccain did, or else it was very close. That said, f*ck John Boehner AND Woodrow Wilson.

The news you reported does trouble me, but I don't know why you would expect me or us to give up or admit defeat. We will find another way, and the Campaign for Liberty will continue to grow.

on Romney, was the wrong candidate (again), but at least he is not a Marxist.

Ron Paul would have crushed Obama

Rand PaulThe House leaders chose to punish some of their more conservative members for voting for a budget that balanced in the short term and against one that took 28 years to balance. For standing up for fiscal sanity, they were removed from the budget committee. I object to this action, and it sends the wrong message both to conservative members and to the American taxpayer.

You just don't get it, do you?

The Republican Party is the party of funneling money from the taxpayers to the military-industrial complex. They will never, ever tolerate any genuine pro-liberty reforms. For 75 years they have put the same libertarian promises in their campaign rhetoric, and in all that time they have never upheld any of them. Stupid, gullible suckers keep buying it, and ALWAYS, without fail, get burned. Do you really think it's a coincidence that there's always some libertarian or quasi-libertarian that seems like the "rising star" in the Republican party, and always gets cut down just before the moment when it seems he will make a difference? These little starlets are permitted so that they suck money and volunteers away from the Libertarian party, but they will never be allowed to hold the keys of power.

I just can't believe that after 75 years there are still people that fall for the same trick. Then again, chain letters have been around longer than that, and there's still people falling for those.

Phatscotty wrote:No way! I disagree! There is a quasi-dimension here that is not being accounted for!

Sure, the fiscal wing mostly turned out, the Social wing somewhat sat it out, and the Liberty wing was AWOL. But most important were the Independents. roughly 10 million less people voted this time than in 2008, and (correct me if I am wrong) but Mitt Romney got more votes than John Mccain did, or else it was very close. That said, f*ck John Boehner AND Woodrow Wilson.

The news you reported does trouble me, but I don't know why you would expect me or us to give up or admit defeat. We will find another way, and the Campaign for Liberty will continue to grow.

on Romney, was the wrong candidate (again), but at least he is not a Marxist.

Ron Paul would have crushed Obama

Rand PaulThe House leaders chose to punish some of their more conservative members for voting for a budget that balanced in the short term and against one that took 28 years to balance. For standing up for fiscal sanity, they were removed from the budget committee. I object to this action, and it sends the wrong message both to conservative members and to the American taxpayer.

You just don't get it, do you?

The Republican Party is the party of funneling money from the taxpayers to the military-industrial complex. They will never, ever tolerate any genuine pro-liberty reforms.....

uh, actually I do get it. It is one of the main reasons I am a loyal Ron Paul supporter, not at all a Mitt Romney supporter. I know all too well about the morbid obesity of the military and where the money comes from, just as much as you do if not more so. Not sure what else you would expect from a morbidly obese government hell bent on growing ever larger and more powerful though... I hear you about 'never, ever going to win', and I don't entirely blame ya either. However, as for me, that is not a good enough reason to give up, or not even try. I'm sure people said the same thing to General Washington as to the odds that he would ever, EVER defeat the largest and richest most powerful military in the world with an ill-funded rag-tag group of rebels........

Why do you think I constantly harp about the need to reduce government spending, reduce government funding, reduce the size of government?????????

However, Ron Paul did not win the nomination to run for president in 2012, Mitt Romney did. Ron Paul did everything he could, and actually won the majority of delegates from 13 states; I call that 'Progress' and a good start of something that is still growing. And of the choice between 1 of 2 people who were going to be our next president, specifically concerning the original opinion about 'Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are the same!', I simply stated Romney was a better choice than Obama. Can you dig that???

Phatscotty wrote: I'm sure people said the same thing to General Washington as to the odds that he would ever, EVER defeat the largest and richest most powerful military in the world with an ill-funded rag-tag group of rebels........

Washington would have lost if the second largest and richest and most powerful military in the world hadn't come to his aid for reasons of their own.

Not to take anything away from Washington. He was a good, bold leader and fought well, but without the French he would ultimately have been ground down.

Phatscotty wrote:However, Ron Paul did not win the nomination to run for president in 2012, Mitt Romney did. Ron Paul did everything he could, and actually won the majority of delegates from 13 states; I call that 'Progress' and a good start of something that is still growing. And of the choice between 1 of 2 people who were going to be our next president, specifically concerning the original opinion about 'Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are the same!', I simply stated Romney was a better choice than Obama. Can you dig that???

Well, I happen to disagree. As bad as things are under Obama, I suspect they would have been even worse under Romney. Still, that's not what I was criticizing you for. What I'm calling you on is this fantasy that Ron Paul's candidacy was "a good start of something." Rather, it was an end of something. The establishment Republicans learned some new tricks for how to control and manipulate the convention. The next Ron Paul will have the cards stacked against him much more cleverly. No matter how many delegates the outsiders bring, the insiders will find a way to disqualify and/or exclude and/or subvert and/or manipulate and/or buy them.

People who bet against the house always lose in the end. They might go on a little winning streak, but it's an illusion. In the end, the house sets the odds and makes the rules and they will not tolerate losing. The only solution is to wake up, walk out the door, and open a new house across the street.